Elon Musk: SpaceX Will Launch People To Mars In 2024

Never let it said that Elon Musk shies away from bold claims. The SpaceX founder and CEO took the stage at Code 2016 and announced that his company plans to launch the first humans to Mars in 2024, with a planned arrival in 2025.

Before he got to that point, though, he first gave some thoughts about what his company's up to. Starting with a brief lecture to the late-night crowd about orbital mechanics in order to explain why SpaceX has to land its rockets at sea instead of their launch point.

He then went on to discuss why he's landing those rockets in the first place. And the simple answer to that is money. The boost stage is about 70% of the cost of the rocket - on the order of $30 - 35 million.

"I tell my team: imagine there's a palette of cash that was plummeting through the atmosphere and it was going to burn up and smash into pieces. Wouldn't you try to save it?" he asked. "Probably yes."

Musk also got the flip side of the same question that Jeff Bezos got yesterday - namely, what do the two have in common when it comes to their visions of space?

"There are some similarities of opinion. Jeff and I believe it's important to the future to be a spacefaring civilization," Musk said. "That's the exciting, inspiring future."

Talking about SpaceX's immediate plans, Musk said that the company hopes to launch a rocket with one of the 4 boosters that has already launched a payload to orbit and landed again "by the end of the summer."

"The stages are looking quite good even though there was a really difficult re-entry situation," said Musk.

And by the end of the year, Musk said the company hopes to make the first launch its Falcon Heavy rocket, which the company says will be the most powerful in the world by a factor of greater than two. The Falcon Heavy was originally slated to launch in a 2012/2013 timeframe, but a number of complications (and better design innovations) have caused the schedule to slip.

Musk noted that the Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V rocket that first took humans to the Moon. When Falcon Heavy launches, he added, it will be from the same launch pad that Apollo 11 launched from.

As far as long term plans go, Musk as always was focused on Mars. He said that later in September at the IAC conference, he would be announcing SpaceX's plans for the long-term colonization of Mars. He also reiterated plans announced earlier this year for SpaceX to send a Dragon capsule to Mars in 2018. He added that after the first launch, the company plans to send cargo to Mars at every orbital opportunity. Those opportunities come about every 26 months.

He also announced that the company hopes to send the first humans to Mars in 2024, with an arrival time in 2025. Though he admitted that "there's some uncertainties associated" with that plan.

Later on during the Q&A session, Musk opened up more about his visions for Mars. Assuming that SpaceX is ultimately successful in getting lots of people to Mars, "big entrepreneurial opportunities" open up, he said. Those opportunities would range from "the first iron ore refinery to the first pizza joint."

"What SpaceX is trying to do is establish the environment for entrepreneurs on Mars to flourish," said Musk.